Dad's Cheap PC Build

[tardis454]

My Dad needs a cheap PC, his old Dells seen better days, so I offered to toss a $50 PC together for him. I started with an old tower from my friend. The motherboard took a crap in it & my friend had me build him a new PC, so I kept his old one. It's nothing fancy, Pentium 4 3.0ghz, 2g Ram, 80g OS Hard Drive, 250g Slave drive, DVD-RW running XP Home. Everything is good in it except the color, Bleh off white.





I scuffed it with scotch brite & shot some gloss black on the face & rustoleum hammered finish black on the case.





The texture turned out perfect. Dad's a machinist, I'm sure he'll love the toolbox look.





Found a cheap motherboard on ebay for $29.98 shipped...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-P4P800-MX-S-MATX-Motherboard-Socket-478-/230717076341

Only other thing I 'might' need is new Ram, a keyboard & mouse. I should still be able to keep it at or around $50.

[SpiderGearsMan]

computers are easier money than GM warranty

[Beagle]

new "old" ram seems more expensive than a total hip replacement. I may have some that will work... hit me up with the specs you need. "New" new ram is DIRT cheap. I have an 8 core HP at work, about 300 in memory for 16 gb (GIG - f*ing lot of zero's!!) that I pulled out of the trash. Nobody wanted to drop the 300 for the memory that was stolen from it. I loaned it 4gb from another box. Workhorse.

PM me on the ram stuff , I may have some... unless it's for a Linux box, in which case you don't need it. HAHAHAHAHA. J/k.

[squirrel]

16,000,000,000 bytes of RAM? I wouldn't know what to do with 1,000,000,000 bytes

Aside from the lame modern case, that's kinda like the media computer I put together a couple years ago

http://www.selectric.org/ibmpc/atxpc.html

[Barry Donovan]

pentium 4..the first classic worth keeping.
I built my own since 1999. the rage of it all.

I finally calmed down with knowledge and went after a buyild better than the surgeon on my bad foot.

the asus, you will be disappointed, the extra bios gadgets- kid stuff..find a true intel.


40529 hours...and silent.
pentium 4, 3.4e (two thread- they can't lie to me)
ECC ram
intel 875pbz (the last winner)

I still do not even look around. it makes me sick. the home user is a low life now.
a workstation does not even emphasize server type integrity anymore.

[tardis454]

Aside from the lame modern case, that's kinda like the media computer I put together a couple years ago
http://www.selectric.org/ibmpc/atxpc.html

That thing rocks!!! Cathode clock hell yea!

[milner351]

Nice work on the finish!

I need one of you guys for about an hour to clean up some glitches in the $280 kit tiger direct PC I put together a year or two ago.

I can't get the bios update to work right, I have to hit F1 to continue through the boot up, and I really need to get the old hard drive out of there and put everything on the new sata drive. I think I'm going to go ahead and upgrade it to WIN7 too.... we have it at work now, and it came on my toshiba laptop.....

[Beagle]

Win7 is a memory pig. Nothing compared to Vista, but it's huuuunnnnggggry. When I find something I can't do with XP I'll start getting rid of the old stuff here.

John, won't keep settings sounds like the cmos battery may be dead. The nickle sized thing on the MB... you might try replacing it, or get the numbers off of it and I'll grab one out of a box at work if it matches (probably close).

[squirrel]

most of them are 2032 aren't they?

It's good to see I'm not the only one who still can make XP do what needs to be done.

edit: The refinish on the computer is neat, definitely makes it more interesting. I'm still waiting to see a 14" engine cooling fan stuck to the side of a computer case, just to show the "modders" what real computer cooling looks like

[milner351]

Then there's the Mac guys. I understand the romantic notion of having everyting "just work" but I can't wrap my head around a laptop that costs more than a good used car.

[tardis454]

most of them are 2032 aren't they?

It's good to see I'm not the only one who still can make XP do what needs to be done.

Every CMOS battery I've changed has been a 2032. I buy them in bulk off ebay for cheap.
I've had the best luck with Maxell batteries..

$2.79 shipped...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Pieces-Maxell-CR2032-2032-Lithium-Coin-Button-Battery-Long-Expire-Date-/110794404168

^^^That guy's in Hong Kong

Here's one in New York for the same price...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-LOT-MAXELL-BATTERIES-CR2032-3V-LITHIUM-CELL-BATTERIES-/180492867555

[tardis454]

the asus, you will be disappointed, the extra bios gadgets- kid stuff..find a true intel.

All I've ever used is ASUS motherboards. I'd use Gigabyte too, they're pretty tough...

Intel P4 motherboards of that era have bad caps galore. I changed a ton of them back in the day.
I don't install the ASUS BIOS utility crap either, it's not necessary.

[tardis454]

computers are easier money than GM warranty

Only if you get the right parts the first time.



I asked the seller specifically if it had the I/O shield before I bought it. I suppose he thinks just any old I/O shield will do. This guy has some splainin to do...

[tardis454]

Well I got her done. Got a refund on the bad motherboard & bought a much better one, Asus P4C800SE w/875 chipset. Spent all day setting it up & debugging it. It works great, & it's pretty fast even though it's temporarily RAM impaired. Here's a screenshot...



Dad loves GTO's, he had a 67, 400 4spd, Gold/Black vinyl top factory hood tach car. I was looking for one of those for a background but couldn't find one. His 2nd choice was a 65, that was easy to find


So far I have $69.78 wrapped up in this build. I thought I had 4 matched 512 ram sticks, but I only had 3, so I used 2 of the matched 512's, & bought another matched RAM off ebay for $9.79 shipped. It'll be here next week, & then this PC will have a whopping 2gigs of RAM

[tardis454]

So I bought a video card for the cheap PC & got a dud... sorta.. The seller listed it in NEW condition with driver disc, but it's FAR from new, & they sent ATI drivers not Nvidia!!! I downloaded the right drivers & put the card in. It works good, but the cooling fan is shot, & the card gets REALLY HOT!!! Completely disgusted, & tired of making dad wait for his computer, I came up with an easy & FREE fix...
See pics.

This thing is NOT NEW by ANY MEANS!!!!!!!!!!!!





You can see the fan is wasted, the center burned out of it, JUNK!!!



I came up with a brilliant solution, use a CPU fan from a Pentium 1 computer.



The P1 CPU fan is 3x larger, & flows WAY more air then the card needs, more is better.



A few strategically placed zip ties later & the WORKING fan is attached.



Installed, & cool to the touch. There's a little bit of vibration but not enough to hurt anything.




Now I can finally give dad his neused PC this weekend!
The grand total for this build is $95.
$45 over budget but hey, it's for my old man & it WORKS!!!!

YAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!